ALT Charging screen [New Feature suggestion]

[Mik Leahy]

ALT charging screen

We have a model 3 LR and new TFS solar panels, no battery.

Want to divert the excess solar power generated during the day to charge the Tesla model 3 instead of selling it back to grid at a loss. AZ lost its net metering in 2016 8(. Would also like to disable charging during TEP the local power company's Time Of Use On Peak rates between 6-9a and 6-9p.

The ALT charging screen would allow u to enter simple rules:

Loc: Home Days: Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Start: 9am End: 5pm Rate: 4kw Charge Monday from 9am to 5pm @ 4kw.
Loc: Home Days: Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Start: 6am End: 9am Rate: 0kw Do not charge every day from 6am to 9am
or maybe
A location based 7/24 matrix with Kw rate per hour would work.

A hardware solution would require a Home solar monitoring solution that regulates the car charger.

thx-mik

 

[derotam]

I think that is just adding unnecessary complexity to the Tesla vehicle UI, sorry just my personal opinion. I think the better solution is to add battery to your solar system. If I am reading your post correctly you are wanting to use 4kW of excess solar energy during the day that you would otherwise just lose to the grid...so...at $0.12 per kWh(sorry just using my local value), 4kW for 8 hours a day is about ~$1300 per year.

I don't know what your peak/offpeak delta is but perhaps getting some solar batteries and inverter might actually be a cost effective solution.

 

[jjrandorin]

I think that is just adding unnecessary complexity to the Tesla vehicle UI, sorry just my personal opinion. I think the better solution is to add battery to your solar system. If I am reading your post correctly you are wanting to use 4kW of excess solar energy during the day that you would otherwise just lose to the grid...so...at $0.12 per kWh(sorry just using my local value), 4kW for 8 hours a day is about ~$1300 per year.

I don't know what your peak/offpeak delta is but perhaps getting some solar batteries and inverter might actually be a cost effective solution.

I agree with you about the "just adding unecessary complexity to the vehicle UI" but as far as getting batteries for this purpose (charging the car) I disagree with that.

The OP wants to have a way to dump extra solar into the car instead of selling it back to the utility. Batteries do sort of allow that, but there is roughly 10% round trip losses from conversion (Powerwalls are AC coupled, some other systems are not but require getting everything from one MFR for the most part).

They can do what they want simply by charging their car at home, but that wont dump "extra' solar, it will dump "all generation" into the car without some additional steps.

There are a couple of work arounds for the OPs question, but they are not tesla ones. One is, @israndy has a utility that I believe does this. I dont use it myself, but tagging him here as I think I remember that he has a software utility that works with sense monitoring solution to do something like this.

There is another company that escapes me at this point that has something that allows you to do this, and it was also one of the stated benefits of the span panel and charging station, I think.

Scheduled charging with stated amount of kW wouldnt do it however since energy needs change. You have to have something monitoring in real time, and a schedule would not work in the way the OP mentions without some sort of additional piece monitoring real time loads.

 

[cmy4x4]

TesSense - Control your Tesla charging from your Sense Energy Monitor

I have a Sense Energy Monitor that shows me how much solar power I am generating and how much energy my home is using every microsecond. It is nice for logging and realizing I have left the oven on but I would REALLY love if I could have it calculate any free solar and instead of sending it back...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[jjrandorin]

TesSense - Control your Tesla charging from your Sense Energy Monitor

I have a Sense Energy Monitor that shows me how much solar power I am generating and how much energy my home is using every microsecond. It is nice for logging and realizing I have left the oven on but I would REALLY love if I could have it calculate any free solar and instead of sending it back...

teslamotorsclub.com

Thanks for linking that.

We have had a couple of discussion threads in the Tesla energy subforum about this. I went to look for the relevant threads, and here are a couple:

Charging with "excess solar energy" (without Powerwall)

Now that I'm on solar with NEM2, I believe I'll be paying "non-bypassable charges" when charging at night using power generated during the day. These are small, but they add up - I'm calculating about $180 a year for 25,000 miles. One way to avoid this is to charge during the day and constantly...

teslamotorsclub.com

Possible to charge Tesla (car) with excess solar generation?

I just had a 34KW Solar system with 3 PW+ and 5 PW2 installed. I can't export power to the grid until I get PTO which could be up to 90 days. Once my PW's are full, is there a way to have the excess power charge our Teslas, automatically adjusting the power to the car based on the amount of...

teslamotorsclub.com

The other one I was thinking about was one called "chargeHQ"

EV Charging from Home Solar

Start charging your EV from your home solar panels with a 60-day free trial. Works with popular solar inverters + Tesla EVs or compatible smart chargers.

chargehq.net

There is a thread on it in one of the international subforums here:

Charge HQ

Heard Tesla Tom mention Charge HQ as something he's beta testing so went looking. Signed up for it myself and just got access, hoping to solve the "charge using excess solar using only a Tesla charger" problem. Anyone else here using/testing it? https://www.chargehq.net

teslamotorsclub.com

The other thing is, IF you have tesla powerwalls, and IF you are NOT being powered by the grid, and IF you have a tesla vehicle, THEN, there is a setting in the tesla app to send excess solar to the car. It only works under those specific conditions:

1. Tesla powerwalls (with the tesla gateway that gets installed with tesla powerwalls)
2. Tesla Vehicle
3. Most importantly, you must be disconnected from the grid for this feature to kick in. Note that I am not saying you have to have an off grid installation, just that you have to be in a power outage, either unplanned, or planned (as in you flipped your main breaker) for the "send excess solar to the car for charging" feature to work that tesla has built in.

The above solutions (@israndy and chargehq ) dont require that, but do require some other setups etc.

 

[Mik Leahy]

Thank you everyone for your input!
The solution is called: Excess PV Charging found a nice explanation here: Excess PV Charging – What does that mean?

Will manually set the car to charger 10 mile/hr about 11amps during the day for now.
Next year/tax credit season will try the Emporia Smart Home EV Charger solution unless some bedda come along.
thx-mik